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Ira’s last sign of life was a glimmer in his eye, the same firebug spark that lit up those poor houses. For a second Jack couldn’t help but wonder if that was the wish he made all those little cranes for, to be put out of his misery. It was probably not the honest truth, after all Heaven did not treat good men kindly in this tragic miserable farce of a world. They were all good men once. He was a good man once. The concept made him feel sick. Now all he was is a corpse in a sewer, and eventually the water will take him on to a rather shallow grave.
His arm felt heavy again and he leaned against the stone slab of the wall, taking a shaky breath. The pistol he had been trying to grip clattered solemnly to the floor under the weight of the pain, and he felt himself move down so he was sitting. It wasn’t the most comfortable surrounding, granted, but the important part was that it was over. Monroe has the evidence up to his knees while he’s in hospital, Ira was dead, god knows what else will be left when he’s done with this mess.
Silence felt ugly, let alone here, but now it was needed. In this dim light, it was still somehow possible to make out the body. Jack fought the urge to use whatever was left of his energy to get over to the body to examine it for anything useful.
“Mein Liebling?”
The drain-soaked ambience was broken by Elsa’s voice. Jack stared blankly up to see what was happening. She had her back turned from his direction so he could only make out the dirt stains on her clothes. In front of her was a very distant looking Cole, staring at the corpse. He seemed to be in a state of shock, unlike any that Jack had seen, not since Sugar Loaf. It wasn’t as if his mouth was propped open, but he had the same haunted look that all those other GIs had, the ones who didn’t make it out as easily as the others in the division.
Cole was gripping his gun tightly, staring only at the corpse, and the tension flickered to see his whitened knuckles. Suddenly he pointed it up to aim it at his head and gave a single shot, causing Elsa to jump and grip him. “Cole, what are you-”
“I needed to make sure!” His voice cracked to become an irregular snap before his movement became scuffled, knocking her away from him, his oxfords rubbing uncomfortably against the rocks around him. Even this soon, the blood was a tattered darkened puddle, reflecting the newfound nature of what used to be a hardened detective. With some hesitation, he walked to the corpse and knelt down, patting down his pockets with unease. Jack at the least had to admire that he had the same thoughts he himself conjured.
Cole, breath growing oddly shallow, brought out what seemed to be a folded piece of paper. He sat up properly and held the scrapped parchment like it was something fragile before he finally unwrapped it. To Jack it looked like he knew what he was expecting before he could even properly contemplate. A moment passed as Cole stared at the paper before he dropped it to the ground, crawling back on the floor in what seemed to be a collapse and holding his head before the rocks.
Then there was a piercing wail, raw and primeval, that shook both Jack and Elsa to their core. His head shot up further when he realised the shrieking noise was a cry, and that it came from Cole. Jack struggled to get back to his feet, his hand on his arm, before falling back down, instead subjected to Cole writhing slowly on the floor. After a few moments, he got up slightly and stared at Ira’s corpse, his mouth twitching. “He was right, wasn’t he? What… this is impossible, this surely can’t be… then why do I…”
Elsa rushed to his side, leaning over his shoulder and put a hand on it. “Cole, what is wrong? Did something happen? What did that Miststück do to you?”
Cole, without thinking, shrugged her off and turned his head slightly. At this angle, Jack could finally make out his facial expression - one of which was entirely in pain and horror. “It’s not what he did to me. It’s what I did to them. To all of them. I’m a monster. A cold-blooded, heartless…” Cole’s hands scratched the rocks on the ground, filthy water seeping into his fingernails. “I killed them all. Elsa, I killed them all. And I couldn’t even remember that I did.”
“Cole, what are you talking about?” She tried approaching him again and he seemed to go completely still, his body shaking. Jack thought for a moment it was pathetic for a GI to be acting this way, as if he was scared of a mere ghost, especially of his own actions. It felt like watching a shell attempt to connect to his own humanity. Cole finally shot up, dropping the paper and barging past her to the wall, slumping against it and going deadly silent, staring at the ground weakly.
His breath was still weak, trying to catch himself badly before he finally held himself tightly and whispered. “I need a moment. Just… I need a moment.” Seeing the stoic break down felt like their entire world was destroyed. Elsa, startled, didn’t know what she should do and instead stood there before sitting down herself on the other side of that stone slab.
Jack took some breaths himself before he turned his attention to Cole. It was a darkened silence, burdened only by the rush of water. He hesitated once again, unsure what he should do, before he managed to crawl upwards, making his way onto the slab as well. Keeping a distance from his old rival, he sat down again, still holding his blood-soaked arm.
“The fire?” He spoke without any feeling in a flat tone.
Cole nodded quietly, not bothering to give him any physical attention. “I didn’t even realise I did that. I thought… I thought I ended up in the hospital over an injury in the line of duty. I didn’t think…”
He stopped speaking and looked at Jack, his words coming in a jolted wave. “You knew about what I did.”
Jack didn’t bother trying to deny it. He let out a shaky breath of his own and sighed. “Of course I did. I was there. I remember when you were taken to the medic. Do you remember any of that as well?”
Cole shook his head. “No. Just the…” His throat tightened up and he stopped talking, taking in a deep gulp as he gave another shaky breath. “They screamed a lot. They wouldn’t stop at all. Even when we… Jack, there were children crying.”
A pause followed before Jack sighed, nudging closer to him. “After you… after you got shot, you fell unconscious. You got taken away to the medic’s tent and I visited you every day. The first few days you just kept talking, like you are now, rambling about everything you did. And after a while, you seemed fine again. It didn’t seem like you remembered what happened in that cave at all. The medic said he’d seen that behaviour before, some kind of combat response. He said it was best to just let you believe a lie.”
“Because I couldn’t handle the truth? Because I’m guilty?” Cole choked. “Because I am, Jack, none of that should have happened.” There was a pause. “… how do you block out the noise?”
Another pause. “You don’t.”
Jack stared at the ceiling of the sewer and fiddled with his hand slightly before he spoke again. “I told you that courage and cowardice exists in every man. If anything, you remembering all of that suggests that you’ve realised facing the past is better than avoiding it behind a badge.”
Cole couldn’t respond at any of that. He buried his face again in his knees, ignoring the idea of his pragmatism as a comfort. When he finally looked back up he was speaking shakily. “You must be very damn brave to pretend I didn’t rob men of their families. What do you think they would have felt when they found the corpses, if they even did. And all because I made the wrong judgement.”
His attention turned to Ira’s corpse and he swallowed. “He lost his mind in the fire because he didn’t have the luxury of forgetting it like I did. The screams consumed him and he became the tool of other madmen. None of it was worth anything.”
Jack looked back at him and seemed to consider his words again. “Just because it wasn’t worth anything in the moment doesn’t mean you won’t learn in time. You failed to save people when something was avoidable, and I’m sure that if you had another go, you’d be able to atone.”
“That’s the problem, I can’t.” Cole squeezed his knees together. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to. I thought I’d be able to help everyone in this city by being an officer, but it’s just me. I see that now. It’s full of the feckless and corrupt. I’m never going to be able to make amends. Not to any of those people. And not to Hank.”
They let the silence sit for a while, churning out the rush of water down the tunnel. Jack took a deep breath and put a hand on his shoulder. Cole flinched from the sudden contact - an odd move for a man of his character - but he didn’t move away.
“That’s true. But you’ve made a start.” Jack’s voice remained steady. “We’re going to nail those bastards in the Suburban Redevelopment Fund. Every last one of them. And we’ll do it together for once in our lives.”
He winced from his own arm and drew it down slightly, giving Cole some breathing room. As he did, he could see Elsa crawling over, still slightly weak from the time she spent unconscious. She made her way to the other side of Cole, her back not pressed against the wall but instead the direction of the short tides. A moment passed before she put her hand on top of Cole’s, watching as he moved to look at her, lowering his legs slightly but still in a complete shock.
Jack took a long breath. “I don’t like you, Phelps, I don’t think that will ever change as long as we live. But you can’t change the past. What’s done is done. All you can do is carry on. The more you get caught up in these things, you’ll never move on.” It was a harsh truth. “Look at Ira over there. You said it yourself, he lost his mind over it. Don’t let that happen to you.”
He paused again and spoke a bit quieter, as if he was speaking in a way that made him resentful. “You were always one of the smart ones. Too smart for your own good. I’m not going to ever understand you properly but I at least know this much. Tomorrow is another battle, Lieutenant. We’ve already won this one. Count your victories.”
Cole still didn’t respond. Gradually he lifted his head higher to stare at Elsa’s hand, his own hand fidgeting with the ground beneath it before he moved it upwards, grasping onto hers like a lost child. Here it felt oddly warm, even in this miniature hellhole. His eyes turned to Jack, and it was only then that Jack realised that he had been trying to hide his leftover tears, most likely out of shame.
“Courtney was the one who shot me, wasn’t he?”
Jack gave a cautious nod. “Yes, he was.”
He went back to silence for a moment before he gave an odd chuckle, part of his usual self coming back to the front. “I don’t hold it against him. He was a good man to the end. And he didn’t deserve being dumped in some alleyway left to rot.”
“… I think we’ve found something we agree on, Phelps.”
It was rare for Jack to laugh, at least so unguarded, but somehow he did. Cole managed to get to his feet, shuffling once again. “Do you need any help walking? You don’t look like you’re at your best, Kelso.”
Jack shrugged, passing it off. “I’ll be fine. I fought all the way down here. If the devil wants me dead, he’ll have to take me himself. You should really be asking Princess here.”
The compliment made Elsa smile and Cole stiffen slightly before he let the comment go. With a steady ease, he picked Elsa off the floor and swung an arm around her. At least with support, she felt it easier to walk and get out of this place whenever they will. In turn, Jack got to his feet, still having a hand on his wounded arm.
As Cole and Elsa began to take their first steps out of the small hidden crack in the sewer system, Jack stared back at the corpse of what used to be the man with one of the most dangerous professions of all the military. Curious, he made his way over to what remained of the body and knelt down, picking up the piece of paper that Cole had unearthed earlier.
To his surprise, what seemed to have frightened the detective was that it was a photograph of the Sixth Marines, all together, all smiling for the camera. The only exception was Cole, staring just off centre and clearly thinking about what his next order to follow was. Clearly the memory of his old self was just as punishing as the fire itself. It didn’t help that half of the people in this photograph are now dead, no thanks to that morphine.
Water gushed at his shoes and Jack paused to look down, considering it. That was odd. It shouldn’t flow that much, not now. He looked towards the giant pipe that Cole and Elsa were just starting to walk down and called out, “Doesn’t that sound seem odd to you? It’s like the water is getting faster.”
Even the gush was starting to sound ominous, deeper and louder. Cole blinked and strained to see the water coming ahead before he had a realisation.
“We need to get out of here. The storm, it must have caused the pipes to start overflowing. If we wait around any longer, we’ll be caught up in it as well.”
“What are we waiting for then? Get moving!” The two followed suit almost immediately.
Jack faltered a little before his first step out. His attention turned back to the photograph, still in his hands, still alight with the last of the few survivors. Crumbling it, he chucked it into the oncoming waves as he started to walk on. They might as well be buried in a place that will never see the light of what we did.
Years later, he would curse himself for not recognising the way Cole’s eyes caught the water, how even then he seemed to be resolving himself to one last noble deed. If things had been different, then maybe…
No, no maybe at all. You don’t dwell on the past. Even when you do, all that comes out are what ifs. Cole must have been a glory hound to the end, desperate for some way to reclaim some fame. If that was the truth, why did he not save himself? Who commits suicide like that? Was the guilt that strong?
The mind does incredible things that no one will ever understand, Jack recalled. Courtney had always shared that sentiment, apparently more so under Fontaine’s tutelage. The mind also produced a very disturbed thing. Cole Phelps could be both. Perhaps that was the thing that made him so remarkable in his eyes.
What’s done is done. There’s no way to change that. He got his moment. Cole would probably be relieved at that deep down inside. Jack just hoped he felt content at the end.